Experimental and simulation studies of performance and emission characteristics on ethanol fueled direct injection high compression ci engine

Abstract

The report presents the research work on identifying suitable combustion chamber bowl for both diesel and ethanol direct injection High Compression Ignition (HCI) engine to attain better performance and emissions characteristics. In addition, the report also discusses the investigation of suitable EGR ratio of both diesel and four ethanol test fuels, and selection of the best PEG blend fuel among them. To achieve the aforementioned, several other parameters such as suitable piston bowl for both diesel and ethanol HCI engine, compression ratio, swirl ratio, EGR ratio and injection timing are selected with help of Diesel RK simulation models and experiments. The research was carried out on single cylinder four-stroke CI engine with a compression ratio of 17.5:1 and 28.54:1 for diesel and ethanol fuelled modes respectively. The ethanol blended fuels required for the research work were identified and so chosen that their viscosity and density were close to that of diesel. The additives used were methyl tetra butyl ether (MTBE), Iso Butyl Alcohol (IBA) and Poly Ethylene Glycol (PEG), which increased corrosion resistance, viscosity, and ignition quality respectively. MTBE and IBA were held constant at 4% by mass. PEG was varied as 0, 5.5, 6.5 and 7.5% and the fuels were trademarked as EPEG0, EPEG5.5, EPEG6.5, and EPEG7.5. The test fuels were prepared and characterized in-house. The calorific values of these were found to be approximately 25.3 MJ/kg, and their viscosity and density were nearly equal to diesel fuel which made it easy to adopt direct fuel injection system of CI engine. newline